News Brief
January 20, 2007
J'can truck driver sentenced to life in prison
HOUSTON (AP) - A truck driver from Jamaica has been sentenced to life in US prison, avoiding a death sentence for his role in the United States' deadliest human smuggling attempt in which 19 illegal immigrants died from dehydration and suffocation inside an overheated tractor-trailer.
Tyrone Williams, 36, was convicted last month on 58 counts of conspiracy, harbouring and transporting immigrants.
A jury deliberated Thursday for 5 1/2 days before sentencing Williams, himself an immigrant from Jamaica.
Williams was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for each of the 19 counts of transporting the illegal immigrants who died.
Williams looked down as the verdict was read and gave no visible reaction. His attorney, former US Rep Craig Washington, wept and wiped his eyes with a tissue.
In May 2003, Williams' tractor-trailer was packed with more than 70 immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic. Nineteen of the immigrants died from dehydration, overheating and suffocation during the smuggling attempt from South Texas to Houston. Williams abandoned the trailer at a truck stop near Victoria, Texas.
Guyanese opposition holds protest against sales tax
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - Hundreds of people have marched through the Guyanese capital's business district to protest a new sales tax they say hurts the poor.
Chanting "Ax the tax", an estimated 700 protesters - mostly supporters of the opposition People's National Congress - converged outside Parliament on Thursday.
"The government is behaving as though it has the right to trample on the working poor of this country," PNC leader Robert Corbin told the crowd....
Author: Observer Reporter
Source: Jamaica Observer
